A Dwindling Light
by c1araoswa1d
Summary: Tumblr Whouffle Prompt: Can you do a one-shot where Clara has cancer and how the Doctor finds out, but also how their travels slowly deteriorate to just hanging out in the Tardis.


He notices the way she doesn't meet his eye when they step back onto the Tardis after touring the rings of future Saturn and how she's turned her back. The Doctor closes the doors behind him, watching her a moment before making his way up to laugh loudly, jerking her out of a private thought and he asks, looking up to his screen as he types and sends them into the vortex, "What's on your mind?"

Clara glances at the door, giving it a small gesture with her hand as she allows, "That was still good, right?"

Tilting his head, he replies curiously, "Perfectly good, perfectly fine – why wouldn't it be?" Then he adds to the solemn way the smile fades from her lips as she looks to the buttons in front of her, fingers picking nervously at the edges, "What's wrong?"

"I've got cancer," she tells the console simply.

With a nod, he repeats, "Cancer. _Right_. Mutation of the cells in your body, perfectly curable if caught in…"

"Stage four," she interrupts, voice wavering as she finally looks to him. He watches her take a long breath and he understands that she hasn't told anyone else – he knows Clara wouldn't want anyone to look at her the way he knew he was at that moment: like she was already gone. He straightens slightly and nods to her, as she drops her head to elaborate quietly, "Metastatic breast cancer."

"Can't you just…" he makes a chopping gesture at his chest, "Live without them?"

Clara manages a smile as she sighs, "It's not that simple, Doctor," and when she raises her eyes again, it's with tears she refuses to blink to shed, "It's metastatic – that means…"

He interrupts with a nod, and tells her lowly, "I know what it means, Clara."

She takes a step towards him, "I'll be getting treatment." Her hand comes up to take his and he smiles, knowing she's taken his fingers to reassure him even though he knows he should be reassuring her as she continues, "Hormone therapy, Chemo pills, other stuff with complicated names – medical _gibberish_," she explains with a forced laugh. He sees her lift her hand to wipe at her eyes as he looks to the console. "We can still travel, right? Health requirements weren't really part of the recruitment package to enter the Tar…"

"Yes," he tells her quickly, brightening as he nods, "Yes, we'll _travel_." The Doctor slips away from her and begins to slap at the controls, doing a twirl and meeting her on the other side, watching her laugh again at his ridiculousness as he leans against the console to keep himself at eye level as he grins widely, "Clara Oswald, let's make a list, eh? A new 101 places to go, and after that, we'll make another."

Clara smirks and nods and replies, "And after that, _another_."

* * *

They land on a sponge, Clara releasing a howl of a laugh as the Doctor lies still just underneath her, watching her eyes disappear as the sound slips out of her open mouth and soon she bows her head, body jerking softly as the last bits of amusement drift away. In the crisp blue sky behind her a ship is exploding, its trajectory taking it into a purple ocean beside the mustard colored sponge fields, but the Doctor doesn't see it. He simply sees the dimple on her cheek, eyes now obscured by dark waves of hair.

"Stop that," she laughs.

He shrugs as she lifts a hand to push one side of her hair behind her ear, "Stop what?"

"Staring at me," Clara tells him with a small jut of her chin in his direction, "You keep doing that; it's unnerving."

"I'm sorry," he smiles, and he continues to watch her, seeing her eyes examining his face now. Roaming over his chin with a flicker of a grin, then his lips and over his nose to his eyes. Just as he's doing; an intimate moment he knew neither would have allowed a month ago except a month ago they thought she had forever and now... "I'm memorizing you," the Doctor explains, "Every nuance of you. _Every_. _Tiny_. _Detail_."

"Why? I don't intend to go anywhere," she argues, eyebrow arching high on her forehead.

Cheeks reddening, the Doctor begins, "No, it's not that."

"Why then?" Clara demands playfully and she takes hold of his wrists, pushing her lips together sternly to wait for his answer and the Doctor pushes off the sponge behind him, rolling them several times over a mattress-like hill and when they land, he's on top, staring down at her while she shakes with giggles as he sighs.

She's started her medical treatments. If he lifts her dark sweater up to her elbows he can see the bruising from blood being drawn. If he checks her purse he'll find a round container denoting days and dosages. If the Doctor searches her eyes long enough, he'll find the fatigue she won't admit to, and the slight nausea that keeps him from finding the wonder in the brown of her irises, closed now when they move about in space. But he looks beyond the ailment to the woman still with him, the one who's smiling up at him expectantly.

"It's because you're beautiful."

* * *

They hide together behind a set of canisters deep inside a facility meant to build components for computers but was, instead, creating an army of Nanobots intent on destroying cities and devouring people. Her hand is held tightly in his and he can hear her breathing roughly at his side, shoulder pressed firmly to his and he hears her hiss, "What now, Doctor?"

"Suppose we could run?" He questions, voice cracking lightly as he smiles down at her excitedly only to find a frustrated frown. "Oh _fine_, Sonic and hide. _Sonic_ and hide."

Twisting the device in his hand, he releases a long blast of energy and the air is overwhelmed with a high pitched screeching – the sound of searching Nanobots recoiling from the Sonic waves – and he tugs her forward towards the control room. If they can get inside, they can reprogram them with a few thoughts and some tinkering. He locks them in and glances up to see her bent at a table, body lurching slightly and he turns before she vomits.

He's gotten used to it.

_The sickening side effects_.

She's gotten used to it as well.

Looking from Clara to the computer, to the programming he easily pulls up onto the screen, he nods to himself, an idea strengthening in his head. He can see her, coming towards him, steps shaky, hand on her stomach, and she turns to the screen, asking him quietly, "Can you disable them from here?"

With a smile, he offers, "I've got a better idea."

"Doctor?" Clara prompts, and he can hear the worry in her voice, imagines that Clara is smart enough to have figured out why they had come to the planet. Why they'd taken the last ten trips to what amounted to health facilities and research centers. He'd questioned the medical implications of such a technology; technology 21st century Earth had yet to reach.

"I could program them to kill your cancer," he explains with a nod, fingers typing away furiously before she grabs hold of his arm and yanks him free of the computer.

Shaking her head, brow knotting, Clara argues, "You know as well as I do that could kill me."

"Isn't it worth a shot?" He bellows at her, watching the bangs lift from her forehead as her wide eyes stare at him, the unspoken notion – _she would die anyways_ – drifting painfully through their thoughts before they each push it away.

"No, Doctor," she shouts, "It's not."

They stare at one another for a long minute, until the door starts to glow a brilliant blue as the Nanobots begin eating their way through and with one final flicker of her brow upwards as her lips push together anxiously, the Doctor turns and quickly sends a kill signal to the bots and they leap away from the door now bursting into smoke. She coughs twice and that's when he grabs hold of the table and pulls it off the floor to let it slam back down with a angry growling scream before turning.

"_I could have saved you_," he accuses roughly, bending just in front of her to see her shaking her head as she begins to cry.

Clara clenches her jaw and rushes past him, through the embers of Nanobots and out towards the hall where she slows to a stop and hunches her shoulders and, for a moment, he knows – for _just_ one moment – she sobs. He steps out into the hall and watches her take a deep breath before she turns on the spot to look at him, calmly telling him, "I asked. When you were off pretending to be a lab scientist to get a closer look at operations, I asked about whether it could be used to fight off cancer and do you know what I was told?"

Understanding why she'd stopped him, he assumes, "At this stage, it would have a hard time deciphering between damaged cells, and healthy cells, and the treatments in your system – unrecognized in this part of the galaxy in this time... it was possibly it could have attacked everything."

Nodding slowly as he approaches her, hands coming up to rub her arms before he pulls her into a soft hug, she whispers, "In an instant, I could have been liquefied." Looking up at the Doctor, Clara gives a quick shake of her head and she assures, "I haven't given up, Doctor."

"I know you haven't, Clara," he sighs.

They walk towards the Tardis slowly and it pains him to see the effort she has to put into making it off the console and into her bedroom to nap. All of the running, she tells him sometimes, it just makes her tired. But he knows the truth. He slips through the corridors calmly and steps into her room to find her curled up in the bed and he climbs in with her, wrapping an arm around her to quietly cry behind her because the Doctor knows what she won't accept: her time is slipping away.

* * *

"I can't travel for a few weeks," she tells him softly as he lands in her apartment, touching the controls in front of her before adding, "I'm going to have surgery."

"Surgery," he repeats, watching her as she slides a forefinger down the panel's edge and then taps it before looking up to meet his eye as he asks, "What sort of surgery?"

Biting her lip and looking away, she refuses to answer and he thinks, for a moment, she won't and he'll have to pry it out of her, even though he already knows by the way her shoulders bow inward in discomfort at the thought, but she raises her chin and supplies, "Double mastectomy." She takes a short breath and then adds, "And they're taking my ovaries – they say it'll increase my odds. I'd like to, you know…."

_Live longer_, he knows she won't say.

Taking the largest of her tumors, and the origins of a hormone supply that helps feed them, would give her a better chance with the treatments she's been on. He watches her look to the console and he can see her jaw tightening as she clenches her teeth. "It's alright to be angry," he says solemnly, but she shakes her head.

"I can live without them," she teases and he smiles with her.

He shows up the next week anyways, and finds her asleep in her bed in the midst of a nightmare. With a soft shushing, he sits beside her and takes her hand delicately, thumb sliding over the cool skin just beside the bruising from her IV and he calls her name, watching as her brow evens out and her breathing slows.

"Don't worry, Clara. I'm right here," he sighs.

* * *

It's weeks later that they make love shyly, awkwardly, Clara's laughter burning his cheeks more than his exposed skin in her darkened bedroom. She'd taken his hand as he'd exited the Tardis in her living room and she'd inched up to kiss him lightly, hands roaming through the layers of clothing he wore. The Doctor didn't question her as she tugged him towards her bed, his palms firmly at her hips, frowning against the weight loss he could feel before she dropped her dress away.

He'd tripped, sending them both toppling into the sheets in a tangle of limbs, but as soon as they'd settled, she'd whispered quietly, "_Could you, Doctor_?" The unspoken secondary half of her question: "_Make me feel normal_?" remaining behind lips he'd immediately locked onto.

The Doctor wanted to save her the pain of asking. Of admitting that she'd succumbed, for reasons he knew all too well, to feeling she was abnormal. It wasn't a concept Clara was willing to look in the face – that the cells of her body had betrayed her, mutated in such a way that they were leisurely taking bits of her, bits of her life, away. She repeated firmly that she would win because to her it was another battle.

Just another one of their adventures she had to make her way carefully through.

But something had happened. Something she wanted to wipe away with each thrust of his body into hers, with each kiss she stole and each trail her nails left on his back. Clara wanted to succumb to something greater than loss, so she asked him to love her in the most intimate way possible and he gave her his hearts with every gentle caress and every nip of her neck and every soft moan of her name.

He tells her his name – _his real name_ – and he asks her to say it; to whisper it in his ear and shout it out into the darkness because his name on her lips is eternity. And for just a little while he can forget there's a horrible universe that offered her up to him as a gift and was now cruelly and slowly taking her from him. He imagines it's the same for her, that temporary amnesia to her situation and he takes comfort in the smiles she offers when they're spent, gasping into each other before they share a quiet chuckle.

He snakes his arms underneath hers to cradle her head in his hands, looking down at the satisfied grin on her pale face as she looks him over with an exhausted admiration that makes him duck his head. Inching down, he places a kiss to the healed scars at either side of her flattened chest and then lifts his head up to ask, "Could we maybe try that again?"

Clara frowns a moment before her lips curl again and he knows it's more than his loving acknowledgement of what's missing, it's the thought that's just wounded her mind; that all of their _again's_ – moments she'd always known would come to an end – would be coming to an end a lot sooner than either of them had ever imagined. In the wide smile she gives him, he knows she's pushed the thought aside and he does the same as she nods, but replies, "I need some water first; a bit parched."

He rolls onto his side and watches her slip off the bed, glowing skin of her naked body making its way out of the bedroom and when he turns to the pillow, he sees the strands of hair there. More than he knew should be there and he bows his head, telling himself he can't show her the crack in his demeanor – the hollow feeling that had punched a hole in his chest. When she returns, he grins and lifts up too quickly, the motion sending her into a fit of laughter he watches with tears threatening his eyes.

"This time," he teases, "I promise not to poke you with my bony extremities."

Clara shakes her head, "I don't think that's possible, Doctor."

She settles the cup down at her desk and he stands to move to her side, fingers trailing over her skin as he drops kisses to her shoulder, watching the gooseflesh rise over her back. "This time," he tells her quietly, "We'll take it slower," and he raises her head to kiss her as she molds her body against his, her fingers finding his waist and as his head tilts with hers, he can taste her tears.

* * *

The scream as he exits the Tardis alarms him and his Sonic is raised, every nerve in his body instantly on fire, when he steps into her bedroom and finds her throwing the books off a shelf with a ragged sob before she stops, seeing it lying there on the ground. _101 Places to See_. And it's now scattered across a space on the floor, aged pages knocked loose by the impact, her leaf lying just at his feet. She utters a shocked, "_Oh no_," looking over it all, and, he notices, refusing to acknowledge his presence.

"Clara?" He questions, pocketing his Sonic and lifting the leaf to bring to her as she falls quickly to her knees to begin trying to order the pages back together, face flushed and crumpled and he looks to the wrap covering her head, knows was lies beneath – or rather, what doesn't.

"Go away," she mutters.

He sighs and begins to pick up the books around him, looking at the other scattered objects – hats and random things from the closet; hair barrettes, combs and brushes from her vanity; pens, letters, and photo frames from her desk. Her lamp hangs at an odd angle, light twitching as its plug sits precariously in the wall. Clara pulls the book to her chest and she turns to take him in, head shaking and reaching for him to slap her belongings out of his hands as he shouts out in surprise.

"I said go away!" Clara barks.

With a frown, he tells her quietly, "No, I won't leave you like this."

Shaking her head, she shouts, "_Doctor, I want you to go_!"

"_No_, you _don't_," he explains solemnly, "You want to erase all of this, _your life_; _you_ want to _leave_ – and because of that, I cannot."

Clara bites her bottom lip and she reaches up to tug the red wrap off her head, watching him smile sadly at the sight of her bald head as she mutters, "It was coming off in patches and I…"

He nods slowly and then reaches up for his own head, undoing the zipper at the back of his wig to pluck it off as she gasps a laugh through her tears and he shrugs, "I knew it would only be a matter of time."

"You shaved your head," Clara says simply.

"Well," he gestures at her before exclaiming, "_So did you_ – don't see me complaining about it."

But Clara's mouth refuses to rise into the smile he'd been hoping for. It remains set in a crooked frown as she narrows her eyes to ask, "You shaved your head for me?"

"Yeah," he breathes with a nod. "Thought it might make you laugh; it's just hair, hair regrows…"

Looking to the book in her arms, Clara cries and he steps forward to take it from her, giving it one small nod before she declares, "Everything is broken," and he knows it's more than the book, or her hair. It's some test result she's keeping hidden in the pocket of her skirt, peeking out just enough that he can make out the logo of the hospital a few miles away.

After a moment, he smiles, waiting for her to look up at him to respond, "With time, and a little effort, all things can be mended, Clara."

* * *

"Doctor," she calls as he exits the Tardis and he can hear the question in her voice before she asks, "Can we just stay this time?"

The wrap around her head is blue today and she's made little effort to look presentable, sitting on the couch in grey sweatpants and an oversized shirt that matches the wrap. Her lips are pale and her hands are gripped around a steaming mug of tea as she smiles up at him. "Tardis library, all the books you'd want to read in the universe – I could read to you a while?"

"Adventure the old fashioned way," she hums with a smile, bringing the mug to her lips to take a sip before standing and taking a moment and several breaths as he watches. "Sorry, new medication; it's making me a bit dizzy."

He steps closer to her to watch the pulse at her neck slowly beating away as he tells her calmly, "It's alright, Clara; we've got time."

Her shoulders lift slightly as she smiles up at him, nodding before he reaches out to take the mug from her, settling it on the coffee table. The Doctor lifts her off the ground and she lays her head at his shoulder as they walk into the Tardis, her fingers fumbling with her shirt at her stomach. "Maybe we could see space, sort of sit and take it all in."

"Of course," he tells her as the doors close behind them. He sets her in one of the chairs around the console and goes to work to take them past the Milky Way and he parks them to reach out for her hand, helping her up slowly and towards the doors.

She winces as she sits and he knows her body is sore, it's been sore for some time and neither one of them has brought it up because he knows Clara will tell him it's a sign that something is going right and he'll know it's a sign that something's gone wrong and it'll be a fight he doesn't want to have with her. Trying to convince her of something she's unwilling to acknowledge. So instead they ignore it because the Doctor knows what Clara needs is someone to give her the hope she needs to continue having it herself.

When he lands beside her, legs dangling out into the gravity bubble the Tardis is holding for them, Clara turns to him to ask, "Have you ever thought about it, just drifting off into the stars?"

Reaching for her hand, he shakes his head, "Aren't I already drifting through the stars?"

Clara chuckles weakly as she leans into his shoulder, "Sometimes I wish we could sit out here forever."

"Nah," the Doctor teases, "You'd get bored." Then he adds with a pursing of his lips, "And hungry."

"And there's the matter of urination," Clara tells him playfully.

"There's _that_," he agrees. "No," the Doctor sighs, "It's best to keep a sight like this special; like everything else – too much and it becomes mundane."

Clara tilts her head against his arm to ask lightly, "Have I become mundane yet, Doctor?"

Kissing her gently, he touches his forehead to hers, shaking it to whisper, "Always growing; always changing; always expanding, like a living universe…" The Doctor stops and leans back, searching her eyes as she peers up into his hopefully to continue softly, "You'll never be mundane to me, Clara."

"I started another trial this week," she admits.

"Yes," he nods, "Your second."

"My fifth," she reveals. "It's a bit more… _invasive_."

He hides his anger at her withheld information, clenching his jaw and then releasing it to ask "Do you want me to scan you?" He's almost rising when she grabs hold of him to keep him in place and he knows it's not to keep her balance.

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you," Clara says quietly.

He only nods again and they both turn back to the stars.

* * *

Their trips become quieter, slower, and the Doctor holds her hand not out of a fear of losing her in a crowd, but because he knows she needs his sense of balance to maintain her own. They walk slowly through fields of exotic flowers and they tour a museum on Earth two hundred years into the future and they float on oversized leaves in a planet with very little gravity. He's lying on his stomach, just a few feet above her, checking the tether that holds his leaf to hers for the fifth time when he waves his Sonic at her as she closes her eyes and smiles at the stars above them.

_Terminal_.

He can't control the trembling in his chin as he watches her release a long sigh, enjoying the sensation of low gravity and the smooth skin of the vegetation she rests on, curled underneath her like a golden sunset. She's confidently told him she's winning and it starts to dawn on him that she could be lying to him – Clara could be lying to _herself_ because she believes the mind is more powerful than the body and if she just wills her body to fight a little harder, just a little bit longer, she could knock the cancer out.

But he can see the dark circles under her eyes, despite the makeup she's applied and he sees the hand settled atop her stomach, holding onto the queasiness that's become a permanent presence as her medication increases. Her other arm is draped over the top of her head, lying atop the black and red wrap that matches the dress that hangs loosely off her body now. The Doctor flips awkwardly onto his back because he can't _not_ see it anymore. Not with his Sonic telling him there's no point – the illness is too...

His leaf shifts and he knows they're being tugged back to the ground and he hurries to wipe at his eyes, not wanting her to see the redness in them, or hear the sniffles because he knows she needs strength. And he has to give it to her.

Rolling off his leaf with a hop as it reaches stasis just a few feet off the ground, the Doctor offers her a wide smile, brow high on his head, watching her chuckle lightly, her fingers coming up to touch her nose as she covers her mouth. The Doctor lifts a hand for her to hold and she takes a step towards him and stumbles, but he catches her, lifting her off the ground and telling her quietly, "That's enough excitement for one day."

Her hand lands at his chest and she stares at it as she strokes at the fabric with her forefinger, asking him lightly, "Just a little longer?"

With a nod, watching her eyes drift up to meet his, he nods, "A little longer, Clara."

* * *

He arrives to darkness and checks his watch, frowning and scratching at his head in confusion and then his hearts start to pound as he rushes towards her room before he hears the clearing of a man's throat and he stops. The lamp beside her couch flickers on and he sees Dave seated there, looking up at him with a frown before he tells the Doctor with a raised palm, "She's alright; she's just not here."

Taking a long breath, the Doctor nods and asks quietly, "Where is she, Dave?"

"Hospital," he admits with a shrug. The man chuckles lightly and gestures up at the Tardis, "She told me about you, you know." He sniffles hard and smiles weakly, "She says you're the only doctor who can administer anything that makes her feel alive."

Nodding slowly, the Doctor watches Dave as he exhales a sob, one the Doctor knows he's been holding in for quite some time, and he tells him plainly, "We should be with her, Dave."

"You go on," the man replies quietly, giving him a wave of his hand, "I think I'd like to sit here for a while."

"Dave…" the Doctor begins.

"I've lost my wife, Doctor – _now I have to lose my baby girl_." He looks to the Tardis, "And she says there's nothing your fancy time machine can do about it." He laughs. "You're the thing she's fighting for and there's nothing you can do for her."

Swallowing roughly, the Doctor explains, "Not everything works out the way we'd like it to. A million different places in a million different times – _do you really think I haven't tried to save her_?" He waits for the man to meet his gaze before admitting, "The past two years, I've been to every corner of the galaxy and anything that could work wouldn't work on her because it's too far in the future – too advanced for her biology, or she's too far along for it to help and she told me to stop." He looks to the ground a moment in frustration before he glances up to correct, "And Dave, she's not fighting _for me_; she's fighting _for herself_ – she _wants_ to _live_."

"She's been dreaming about her mum lately," Dave murmurs as if he hadn't heard. "Says she calls her at the house in her dream and invites her to go out shopping – that's how Ellie died. Wrong day, wrong time, just going out for a quick trip to the shops." Inhaling slowly, he sighs, "She's calling her home."

The Doctor nods, knowing it was pointless to say another word, and he turns to his Tardis, passing the man on the couch one last look before making his way to the hospital and up to her room. She smiles when he enters and he has to use every ounce of his strength to smile back because she looks horrible and he understands why Dave worries about her dreams. Clara is a shade of pale he's never seen and when she laughs, it emerges in an exhausted set of light huffs as she points.

"I saved you my Jell-O," she tells him, reaching for it and tapping the side with a slender finger.

Closing the door behind him, he walks to her side and settles in the bed, smiling at the item she's still smirking at before he raises her chin lightly with his forefinger to bring her eyes up to him, "How are you feeling, Clara?"

Her lips break into a wide smile and she offers a small bop of her head, one that comes slower than usual as her eyes find his again with a weariness that pains him, "Don't worry – _I know you're worrying about me_, but it's just new medicine. Some new clinica…"

"How many are you going to endure, Clara?" He asks and he can see it instantly in her eyes, the burn of anger he knows comes from Dave asking her the same question. Wondering how long she's going to prolong her suffering, because it seems like everyone understands except her…

She shakes her head slightly and tells him as strongly as he knows she can, "I'm not giving up, Doctor. I'm never giving up."

He reaches out to touch the fuzz of dark hair that's grown over her head, feels the way it lightens in patches; disappears altogether in others. Clara's mouth perks into a soft grin as his palm rounds the side of her head, drifting over her ear to cup her cheek and she leans into it, eyes closing and before long he's shifting her back against the pillow, having fallen asleep in his hand.

* * *

He carries her into the Tardis most weeks because she's too tired to walk and her legs ache. Sometimes he questions whether the chemotherapy and radiation are harming her more than the cancer, but he never tells her because he can see that sparkle in her eyes in a way it hasn't existed in a long time. She clings to him as he settles into a comfortable couch in the library and he reads to her as she lies against his chest, listening, and sometimes interjecting her own stories, or tiny bits of literary analysis.

Those are the moments he enjoys the most, when her mind is so alive it, so vibrant, he's transfixed by her words, wanting to jot them down on a paper to smile about on a day he's re-reading the novel just to remember her thoughts, or record them to hear her voice later. It's not the same as it used to be most of the time, like she's just woken from a nap and can never quite clear the sleep out of her throat.

"I was thinking," Clara suddenly tells him as he's searching the pages of 'Peter Pan' to find where they'd left off the week before. "When I get better, I think I'd like to move aboard the Tardis permanently."

With a smile, he offers, "Move in now."

Clara grins up at him and she carefully undoes one of the buttons on his shirt, slipping her palm against his chest to a spot she loves – a spot where she can feel both of his hearts – and she tells him teasingly, "Nah, my dad would miss me too much right now."

Her eyes lift to his and he knows the beating just underneath her palm has quickened and he asks, "Are you still dreaming of your mum?"

The smile on her face is bright and her eyes water as she nods and laughs, "We go to the cinema and watch horrible old movies I haven't even though about since I was a kid."

"Clara," the Doctor prompts, "Tell me about your mum."

Her head drops onto his shoulder as she begins softly, "She's like sunshine, Doctor – you'll love her. Always ready for an adventure, always has a story." There's a pause and a soft chuckle and she glances up at him, "She's beautiful and she knows just how to make all of the bad in the world go away with a few simple words. And she smells of jasmine, all of the time." Clara continues to speak, her voice fading as she drifts to dream of the woman, the Doctor sadly laments, she'd just described as though she were still with her.

* * *

"Can we just lay here?" Clara asks softly, eyes peering up at him from her spot on her bed and he can see it in them. He's seen it too many times before, that dwindling light. It sends his hearts racing for a moment before they calm… _for her_… because he understands that these are the final moments and she's held on just long enough for him to arrive.

"Of course, Clara," he replies quietly with a small nod of his head as he unclasps the hands he hadn't realized he was grasping in tight fists at his waist. He slips out of his purple coat and drops it lightly on the back of a chair before kicking off his shoes and tugging at his collar, swallowing past the painful lump that's knotted there as he makes his way to her, watching her carefully sit up.

The Doctor climbs into the bed and leans against the back wall, raising an arm as she cuddles into his side, laying her head there, hand resting on his stomach. The room is silent around them until she breathes in and he waits for her to speak, eyes closing in anticipation. "I'm _dying_," she finally tells him and he realizes it's the first time she's acknowledged it. He can hear it in her small laugh, as though it were the first time she believed it. As if this whole time she'd been waiting for her body to fight back in just the right way to make it all better.

And it hadn't been able to.

"Doctor," she calls, shifting to look up at him and he steels himself for the reality he would see in her face. The dark circles she'd stopped hiding underneath her eyes and the pale skin still dotted with shades of her dimples as she tries to smile for him – after all she's been through, he understands, Clara is still holding onto her desire to make things ok for him – and he laughs weakly with her.

"Yes, Clara," he whispers.

She inhales to say, simply, "Thank you."

He can see the tears welling in her eyes as she smiles and he tries to do the same, but he can feel his insides collapsing because when she lays her head down against him again, her hand slips to his lap. It lays there limply as she exhales a breath that burns across his chest and he waits for what feels like an eternity for her next, but it never comes.


End file.
